Getting Rid of Fruit Flies With Diatomaceous Earth

We have fielded a few questions about those ubiquitous fruit fliesover the past few months and when doing some research about these little creatures and collecting ideas for stopping them in their tracks, this post from Bentley of Red Worm Composting popped up.

Of all the pesky creatures that visit a compost site, these harmless, cloud-forming, ethereal little beings seem to have the most propensity for annoying the socks off composting gardeners. Myself, I rarely suffer from them and if I do, I generally just leave the lid off my bin for a while till nature takes its course and either the fruit flies are devoured by a competitor or conditions in the bin change and they no longer find it attractive.

Overly damp compost with too many nitrogen-rich ‘greens’ relative to ‘browns’ along with warm, humid weather are usually the reason for an infestation, so the addition of some extra carbon-rich ‘brown’ ingredients, which will dry out your mix, should go a long way to solving the problem.

Anyone who has lived in warm, damp parts of the world will have experienced the fruit flies in their fruit bowls and flying around their kitchen bins. This is often the sign of fruit past its ‘use-by’ date which of course is how the fruit in our compost may be described. We often inadvertently introduce fruit fly larvae and eggs into our home on the fruit and vegetables we buy, so a good habit is to wash all fruit and veg immediately.

A further method of control is to make a trap using a small plastic container. Pierce the lid with small holes and bait the trap with, for example, banana skins, cider vinegar or honey. Flies will crawl in through the holes and stay there – no way to get out.

These remedies are easy to implement and most often will do the trick. However, what do you do with a massive infestation as suffered by some of the writers and commentators in the article below? I thought that the information here may be of considerable assistance to anyone in that position. It offers another solution to the problem which you may find interesting no matter where you are situated, so here goes.

Do enjoy – with thanks to Bentley of RedWormComposting

“My friend John is a serious Worm Inn fan. Back in the fall, he upgraded from the standard model to the Worm Inn Mega. Bigger system, more worms, more processing power…but also more trouble if something “goes wrong”! In John’s case, this came in the form of a fruit fly….”